Getting a late start on retirement saving and debt reduction in middle age with a middle class income.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Where's the Middle in Middle Class?

Bluebird, over at Hedonic Adjustment has an interesting post on retirement savings (or lack thereof) by middle class folks like me.

Or not.

Bluebird thinks that his is a typical middle-class family. He's 45 and makes around $100,000. I dunno about that. Maybe it's because he lives on the east coast, where family homes sell for $400,000. But while he's middle-class, I don't think his income is typical.

I reside in the Pacific Northwest. Housing prices have soared here, as they have everywhere else. But no one I know considers $400,000 a median price for a family home. If we wanted to pay that much, we'd move to California!

Personally, I'd say that most middle income families around here are making about $60,000 a year, and that's often with two incomes. Is this just my working-class roots showing? Or am I running with a low-income crowd?

1 comment:

Whether you're "middle class" or not depends primarily on where you live. Every different city/county actually has different, government-issued income ranges that indicate poverty, extreme poverty, middle class, etc. I wish I knew where they were published...but the point is you can't compare your income to someone's in another state. Not only do home prices vary wildly, but so do tax rates, gas prices, and everything else.

But of course it's useless to compare yourself to others anyway. Just make sure YOU are getting better every year! :-)